"Extreme Measures" - Destroy the cure. What?

[spinagogue]

I think it's a great episode but recently what I consider a huge plot hole occurred to me, namely, what the heck was Sloan hoping to accomplish by coming to DS9? Destroy the cure? Well, that wouldn't be much good unless he destroyed Dr. Bashir too.

It turned out the cure was something simple, but even if it had been something that had taken Bashir a while to synthesize, Sloan's "destroying" it would be pointless as Bashir could just make it again. What, was Mr. genetically-enhanced going to forget how he made it?

The only good merely destroying the cure would do, that I could think of, is that it might buy a tiny amount of time for Section 31 to infect the Founders with a new virus whose cure would then be unknown at least for the time being, or maybe be designed to be incurable by any means.

Anyone else thought along these lines?

 

[NCC-73515]

I'm pretty sure he would've killed Bashir and destroyed all relevant data and made it look like an accident

 

[kkt]

Yes. Sloan deals with nasty stuff all day long. He would not even blink at killing Bashir along with destroying the cure.
After all, Bashir was reluctant to be the operative he needed.

 

[Tosk]

I doubt that killing Bashir would have been Sloan's very first move, but I also have no doubt he'd have done it if he found it was the only way to stop the Founders getting the cure. Sloan killed himself to protect the secret.

 

[kkt]

Killing Bashir wouldn't be his first move, but he wouldn't regard the job as done until Bashir was dead. Sloan would have to make sure there wasn't an extra copy of the cure in a safe with "open in case of my death" written on it.

 

[Oddish]

Pretty straightforward. If Julian had indeed found a way to cure Odo, Sloan was going to eliminate him. He couldn't risk the Founders getting hold of the cure. He was only talking to Julian to find out who else knew; otherwise he probably would have just vaporized him on the spot.

 

[Tosk]

Sloan tends to like a circuitous route. I'm thinking the mission he told Bashir he had for him would have involved some elaborate bullshit as busy work and as a way to find out what he needed to know.

 

[spinagogue]

Oh. Alright, well all of those answers completely make sense. I guess I just missed it. Perhaps because in the episode none of the characters talks about their plan to lure Sloan to the station as putting Julian's life at risk because Sloan may be coming there to kill her. But I agree that's what makes sense and what Section 31 would "authorize" if necessary.

Pretty straightforward. If Julian had indeed found a way to cure Odo, Sloan was going to eliminate him. He couldn't risk the Founders getting hold of the cure. He was only talking to Julian to find out who else knew; otherwise he probably would have just vaporized him on the spot.

I think you're right. It's just that for all Sloan knew at the moment - that Julian "had found" the cure, and that he could have told an arbitrarily large number of people about his having found it and what it was - Sloan might have come there contemplating that he might "have to" blow up Deep Space Nine itself. Maybe he suspected, probably rightly, that Julian wouldn't have blabbed about something so important to too many people, but it's uncertain and of course all speculative because of what actually occurred in the ep.